Interviews Michael Berry is a professor of Asian languages and cultures and director of the Center for Chinese Studies at UCLA. He has published extensive works on addressing the richness and diversity of Chinese art and culture in sinophone communities. He is also an award-winning English translator of several Chinese literary works, including Yu Hua’s To Live (2003), Wang Anyi’s The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai (2008), Wu He’s Remains of Life (2017), and Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City (2020). Recently, he has been invited by Yale University, Duke University, University of Pennsylvania, and Washington University in St. Louis to give lectures on Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary. In this conversation with King Yu, Berry discusses the process of translating Wuhan Diary, in which he encountered unusual challenges outside of the text. King Yu: How did you become aware of Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary (2020)? And how did the project of translating her diary come into being? Michael Berry: I had met Fang Fang over the internet about two years ago, roughly around 2018. A mutual friend introduced us, and we discussed the possibility of me translating her novel Soft Burial, which is how I first got to know Fang Fang. Eventually we decided to go ahead on that project. I actually produced a sample translation and put in a grant application for Soft Burial in 2019. I was actively working on that project... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2021-02-24 15:28:04 UTC ]